We distinguish, in a single character which our judgment can decypher, an absolute difference between soul and matter: we cannot avoid representing the latter as infinitely divisible, whilst, on the contrary, all the efforts of our imagination could never divide that indivisible unit which composes the soul, and which is the sovereign over our will, thoughts, and all our faculties[5]. But if we examine again, under another appearance, the properties of matter, we know not how to assimilate to them the emotions of our soul; for we distinctly feel those emotions, let their number be ever so numerous, when even they act together and terminate in the same center, which is that Indivisible Being before alluded to; whereas matter, by an essential property, cannot, in the same instant be pressed or struck in several manners, unless it is in parts which have a tendency to different centres. There is not then any resemblance between the impressions that our souls receive, and the various effects which may be attributed to the action of all the material substances of which we can form any conception: they are always connected with the idea of space and extent; but that centre, where all our perceptions meet, that Judge, who dictates laws in the internal empire, whose revolutions we only know, that last Director of our will, this Indivisible Being, at the same time our friend and master, is not to be found in any compounded idea; and this unity so simple, ought necessarily to convince us, that nothing which is submitted to the dominion of our senses, can serve as a type of the idea which we are to form of the soul. We discover the traces of this truth, when we fix our attention on the comparisons with which our spiritual unit, our identical self, is continually occupied: we imagine it seated on a throne, listening, and examining the various reasons which ought to determine its action; we see it, like Nero, yielding sometimes to Narcissus, and sometimes to Burrhus; but at the same time we distinctly perceive all the counsellors, all the flatterers, all the enemies which surround it; we never remark but a single master in the midst of the tumult and the intrigues of this court.